


Kokuhaku

by goodnightfern



Category: Metal Gear
Genre: M/M, ableist terms, bastardized philosophy, bitter old man kaz, due to kazs precious self hatred, food safety protocol, model train sets, sad old man sex, the hamburgers of hellmaster miller, worst behavior
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-12
Updated: 2017-09-12
Packaged: 2018-12-26 11:39:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,134
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12058230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goodnightfern/pseuds/goodnightfern
Summary: Benedict McDonnell Miller owns a hamburger shop in Los Feliz. He has a wife, a kid, a dog, and a hatchback. He's happy.





	Kokuhaku

Elena’s a seventeen year old girl from Silver Lake, not a recruit to be whipped into shape. But she’s standing stiff-backed, hands held straight down, completely rigid. 

“Yes, sir. Safety gloves on at all times."

“And when you take them off to pick your nose and scratch your ass, what do you do before you put on a new pair?”

“Wash my hands, sir.”

"Hmm. By pissing in the sink and splashing around?"

She stares at her shoes. "Lather first. Thirty seconds, at least, and the water as hot as I can stand it." 

“Get back to work.”

“Yes, sir.”

Elena goes back to chopping onions with her shoulders bowed. The other kids give her wary looks, glance down at their own hands in fear that they’re doing something wrong. That Benedict Miller is about to rip them a new asshole.

Yeah, staff turnover is a little high.

Food safety procedures aren’t hard. Wash your hands. Don't point a knife at anything you're not planning to cut. Cook the meat till it isn’t pink. Don’t let raw chicken spill its juice all over the worktable and if you do, wash the table in three steps. Not one. No, you don’t just throw sanitizer solution on top like -

“Felix!”

Felix freezes. His parents named him after a fucking cat. He needs all the help he can get.

"Where's your soap?”

“My soap…”

“Your soap bucket, which is the first step in cleaning any object made of stainless steel! You wash that table just like it’s a pan! And you will use separate towels for each! Three! Stages of the dishwashing process!”

Felix gulps. 

“It’s not hard, people!” Kaz relishes the drum of his cane on the rubber safety mats he’s spread all over the back kitchen. “If the USDA guys were here right now, you would all be out of a job. What the hell are you looking at, Kyle? We open in thirty minutes, the only thing you should be seeing right now is crisp green leaves of romaine. I’m going to wash all the dishes you’ve all stacked up and when I come back the floors will be clean! The fryer baskets will be stocked! Every napkin dispenser will be full, every ketchup bottle will be full, and every last one of you will have your prep stations ready to serve an entire squad of Little League kids and their parents and grandparents and dogs combined!” God, he wishes he could make them run laps. 

“Yes, sir!”

Kaz turns on the sinks full blast until the roar of water is all he hears. Yeah, he knows. Old habits die hard.

And maybe he’s a little on edge since that third call this morning, but it’s also an old habit of Commander Miller’s to take his frustrations out on staff.

__

__

_“Take it out on me if you have to. Not them, not her. Never again.”_

_“Boss, that woman - ”_

_“Saved my life. Multiple times.” A hand brushing his chin. “You’ve let hatred be your guide for too long. Your rage, your pain - that won't sustain you. It makes you -”_

_"Really, Snake? Using_ his _words on me?"_

He'll die before he crawls off to FOXHOUND. Just send the old attack cat to come and shoot him already. Burn the burger shack to the ground. 

Acting like Kaz could have a place at his side again, hah. Then in the next breath saying he was retiring from FOXHOUND anyways. Wanted to make sure he’d leave a good man behind, a man he could trust. Dangled his son like a carrot. 

Nice try, John.

Kaz is done. He's a legitimate small business owner and he's living his dream. Cathy might be the only good thing he’s ever done in his goddamn life. He and Nadine are… working on things, but they’ll be fine.

What was that last fight about? Right, Kaz is supposed to get tested. For fucking HIV. A perfectly reasonable suggestion, but Kaz had to go and tell her that even if he did have it, it’s far too late for her, too late even for Cathy, and he’d left her weeping at the kitchen table while he stalked outside to the corner store to buy just one fucking cigar. Just one.

He isn’t even fucking men, or other women, or anybody but his wife since he got married. But Big Boss had the audacity to leave a message on the answering machine. All vague and seductive, just a taste of what was to come if Kaz left L.A. to go sit at his master’s side again.

Said they  _belonged_ together.

_“What are you, some kind of a homophobe? That’s rich. So much for your bleeding heart.”_

_“That's not the issue here.“_

_“Really? Then what is it? Making a scene, in front of Cathy even."_

_"I've never questioned your past, not once. But this is the one, right? The one who broke your heart? You said that was years ago, but he's calling our home - "_

_“Anyone can pick up a fucking phone book, Nadine.”_

_“I don’t care if it’s a man, I'm just - “_

_“You should. You really, really should. You want to know how many men I'm fucking? I’m an old whore from way back, Nadine. You think you could ever keep me happy?”_

The cigar was horrible. Left him coughing and stinking all night.

It’s Nadine’s fault. Willing to marry half a man, physically and emotionally. Not even Benedict McDonnell Miller can fake it, not through the work of a marriage. Not after drowning himself too many times already. In the Indian Ocean, in the Caribbean. Hell, even in Sagami bay.

When they rode the ferry to the Channel Islands on one of their earlier dates and Kaz held onto the railing and looked at the churning water and thought -

Nothing.

Nadine touched his arm. Brought him out of it. She could do that better than the phantom ever could. Knew things had happened, that he was ex-military and shit happened but she never cared, never presumed to heal him. Only loved the man he was.

Kaz washes dishes. Doesn't even break anything with the bionic hand. Works until closing time, kicks the kids out early, finishes mopping in the flicker of the neon sign he’d paid too damn much to have installed. 

Drives to an empty house in Los Feliz. Nadine took Cathy to her sister’s for the week. 

D.D. doesn't even bark when he opens the door. He's almost completely deaf, now, but Kaz still talks to him. He should never have taken the dog, but D.D. was getting old towards the end of things. Hip dysplasia had set in, cataracts clouding his single eye.

Venom asked him to take him. Said he deserved a peaceful end. 

Kaz has never bothered to ask John about him. The phantom was nothing more than a tool. A photocopy who’d been programmed to brush Kaz’s jaw with metal fingers, to hold him through shaking nights of panic. To smile when he’d seen Kaz touch down in the aftermath of Sahelanthropus, lean in for a kiss -

_Not in front of everyone, Boss!_

Kaz sinks to the floor. Buries both hands in D.D’s fur until the dog rolls over to give him his belly. 

That's another thing Nadine shouldn't have ignored: ex-military or not, he's got state of the art Soviet tech attached to him, and a leg to match. He can look at his body without ever thinking of the lying bastard fake cowboy who gave it to him, and it's pretty damn good. All that fat he put on when he was wasting away behind his desk has turned to solid mass. When he was younger Kaz had hoped for this: that he could be pushing fifty and still have it going on. 

Yeah, if you like cyborgs. But one thing the new decade has brought is a fascination with cyberpunk. Robots and the internet and all that shit. 

“You ready for dinner, boy?”

D.D. is. Kaz has a mistake order long gone cold inside its paper wrapping. Takes the veggies and onions off, scrapes away the sauce and cuts it up to scatter over the dry food. Kaz might give him too many treats, but whatever. Let him be fat and happy in his golden years.

He ate enough at the restaurant anyways. When the phone rings, Kaz yanks out the cord. Doesn't even give Nadine or John the chance to reach voicemail. He makes a drink and goes down to the basement with D.D. Puts on Chaka Khan, turns on the single flickering bulb over a fabulous miniature of good old small-town America that just so happens to be populated entirely by African wildlife. A pink and white candy-striped steam engine rolls through, constant and unchanging. The second most beautiful thing Kazuhira Miller has ever made.

Yeah, Cathy was responsible for most of the setup. The zebras are getting ice cream with the lions. Real cute.

Why’d he tell Nadine he was having wild affairs, of all the things?  Bisexual orgies are going to bite him in the ass when it’s time for custody hearings. It sounded better than _I’m an old war criminal and my ex wants me to keep doing war crimes with him, and my other ex is about to die and my other other ex gets off on torture and if I do anything he’s going to come and kill me kill you rip Cathy apart and -_

There’s a cruelty that rises in his throat when he's in the heat of it. Kaz never thought he’d be the type of man to shout at his wife. To make her cringe - what, like he was going to hit her? Like he was going to choke her out the way _he_ used to?

Smirk while Kaz tied his scarf in the morning. Tug it off to see the bruises he’d left. All part of the game. They had fun. Got a little kinky.

Even then, Kaz would wake up with his heart hammering in time to rain on a corrugated tin roof. Remember there was nowhere to run.

Fall back into the cage of his captor's body.

Kaz puts a giraffe in front of the post office. Hides the jackal behind the mailbox and puts a lion in the park fountain. The phantom would love this. He would genuinely enjoy playing zoo animals with Cathy, probably. If the way he'd looked at Eli when he should have thrown him into the ocean is anything to go by.

Kaz takes another sip of whiskey. Watches the train run, choo choo chugging along.

If Big Boss is leaving FOXHOUND, that means -

He puts a zebra in front of the train. Watches it get knocked over, boom. Puts it up over and over again, watching it fall, until he’s drunk enough to go back upstairs and fall into bed with D.D and pretend that if falls asleep, he won't wake up tomorrow.

In the morning, Elena is waiting for him by the front door of the restaurant.

“Sorry for the wait,” he says, unsure of why he feels the need to apologize. “Nobody in this goddamn city knows how to drive.”

She smiles, briefly. Wavers on her feet.

One day Cathy will be as tall as her. If Cathy’s first job is working for someone like Kaz… it’d be good for her. Toughen her up.

“Too bad for you,” he says, opening the door. “Now you get to work twice as fast to catch up.”

He goes straight into the back office. The rest of the kids trickle in, and Miller makes a big show of squinting at his chunky screen. Doesn’t close the door, they’re always being watched. He should put up cameras - attached to nothing, of course, the wires’ll just go up into the ceiling and end because overhead is awfully tight and he never knew just how damn expensive a fucking burger place could be. The early days of Diamond Dogs were luxury compared to pinching pennies over shit like mopheads and cleaning chemicals. He’d like to think he’s got Sysco under this thumb, but Benedict Miller runs a restaurant, not a mercenary enterprise. He doesn’t have men and guns and tanks and the legendary soldier to put real muscle behind his threats.

Just one crazy old crippled man who’s obsessed with burgers. Probably jerks off into the “secret sauce”, hah.

It’s not a secret. It’s just thousand island dressing. Every burger place in the goddamn world does it and so does Kaz because fuck it. He’s adding extra to his order when Tyler, twenty and stinking of weed, knocks on the open door.

“S-sir… I’m sorry…”

“Spit it out, kid.”

“There’s - there’s some crazy homeless guy here. And he won’t leave or order anything."

Another one of the poor bastards that the city of Los Angeles throws to the streets and then whines about when they set up tents.

"Keeps asking for a - a - a Kazoo-heera?"

Jesus.

Kaz comes stomping out of the office ready to kick the bastard in his stupid fucking -

Scarred face.

The phantom doesn't exactly scream "crazy homeless guy" but the only people who wear hats like that in the summer here are skateboarders or the former. Can’t hide the eyepatch or the fake hand, but there’s a lot of veterans on the streets. 

He looks good, really. There's still brown in his beard. His modest turtleneck and coat are incongruous with the heat, but can't hide that he's gotten even bigger and denser than the last time Kaz saw him.

“If you aren’t a customer, sir, I need to ask you to leave.” Kaz’s voice sounds high, strung-out.

Venom shrugs. “Then I'll take… the burger.”

“You want fries with that?” He’s shoved Elena out of the way. Fumbles over the register. Gets him a number three combo, with a fountain drink and fries even before Venom says anything. Feels his eyes on him. 

His duffel bag has LAX tags at the top. Big Boss has a connecting flight. Big Boss retired from FOXHOUND today, which means the phantom is - which means Big Boss is going _somewhere_ and the phantom is going _somewhere_ but Kaz can’t even think about it, can’t even begin to process anything but his voice, his face, he was always a little taller than the Boss and it’s one of those things Kaz would kick himself for not noticing later.

“I’ve got a long layover."

“Did he tell you where to - “

“McDonnell’s, huh? What happened to Miller’s Maxi Buns?”

“I'm too old for euphemisms. At least now I can piss off the competition, but they can’t sue me for using my own damn name.”

Venom chuckles. When his order is ready Kaz plates it himself. Fills his drink and grabs another for himself and leads him to the table in the far corner, the one protected by a booth. At least it’s a slow day, lunch rush is over, but not all the tables have been cleaned yet. He’ll yell at the kids later. He doesn’t care.

“What are you doing here?” he asks shakily, once they’ve sat. Venom pours ketchup on his fries.

“Long layover. Got hungry.”

“No, I mean -” Kaz swallows. “Does he know you’re here?”

“I’m on my own time, Kaz. My flight was pushed back till three in the morning.” He smiles.

“Where to?”

"Miami." Lots of old people go to Florida. Some billion-dollar condo on the beach. Why not?

"That's not what I mean."

Venom says nothing. Kaz’s mind races through the possibilities. Some leftover Soviet scrapheap. Somewhere between Namibia and South Africa. Outer Heaven was always to be a nation, not a base stranded in the ocean, and Kaz doesn’t even pay much attention to the world news these days. Doesn’t know which juntas have popped up where, who’s been forced to disarm all their nukes and who might _really_ have a problem with that.

“You don’t have to go,” he says. “V, you don't have to just - ”

“This is incredible,” Venom says around his food. “Better than what you used to make. It tastes like…”

“Tastes like America.”

“Mm-hmm.” He takes a noisy sip of Coke.

Kaz slumps back in the booth before making a truly stupid decision. He doesn’t even want to turn away from Venom, like the phantom will just disappear the second he blinks, but he stands up anyways.

“Attention!”

Whispered gossip is silenced. They’re huddled around the cash register, guiltily snapping to attention.

“You all get to thank your lucky stars today. Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah and a joyous Ramadan to all. We’re closing at four.”

They stare.

“Did I stutter? Felix, get that dish sink spotless. Elena, clean these goddamn tables already. Tyler, sweep the floors. I want this place cleared out and locked up in twenty. Close your mouth, kid, and go grab a broom. I’m going to count the drawer,” Kaz says, turning back to Venom. Dropping into a whisper. “Give me a minute.”

“Kaz, don't -”

“D.D's gonna be real happy to see you.”

“He's still alive?”

“Of course he is. Tough old bastard. Doesn’t know when to give up.”

“Your family.“

“They're gone.”

Venom doesn't seem to fit in Kaz’s powder blue Civic - hatchback, of course, you can stack enough diapers for a week in that thing. Kaz drives too fast, barely able to keep his eyes on the road. The smart thing to do would be drive off an overpass. Into the side of a building. The house is close enough to the restaurant, the front door hidden behind dwarf palmettos. Kaz can't fucking breathe, wants to kiss him right out there on the river-stone walkup. His neighbors already hate him.

Venom hangs his coat and hat politely before falling to his knees and into D.D’s slobber. He always let that dog stick his tongue right in his mouth, it’s disgusting, and D.D’s tail is wagging so fast his entire butt is shaking. The dog goes down and Snake goes down with it, until Kaz has an old man and an old wolf rolling all over his hardwood and this flighty and trembling joy makes his shoulders shake.

He makes tea and brings him crackers, some bizarre ancient force of habit unearthed by severe emotional duress. Turns on the boombox, Maria Takeuchi filling in the dialogue. Snake smiles, he remembers the tapes Kaz gave him in 1984. How they'd pretended to dance. Snake propping him up after they'd gotten good and drunk at one of the monthly birthday parties - far away from staff, in Kaz's private quarters. 

In those days Kaz could still get delirious from him. Inebriated enough not to rear back with the trademark ugliness. Before Quiet, even, when he'd realized that Snake was actually fucking serious about this "not about the past" shit. Let Snake heal him. He'd believed it that night, swaying to Plastic Love with his partner in his arms.

Venom Snake laughs over the model train set. Sits on the worn couch they keep down in the basement, out of sight from guests because the cushions sag into the springs and D.D. has scratched up the fabric so much. D.D. sits on his feet while he drinks tea out of Cathy’s mug from Disneyland, the one with Marvin the Martian on it. Smiles over the Polaroids Kaz shows him. Cathy fallen asleep in her high chair, face smashed in a bowl of peas. Cathy with frosting all over her face at her third birthday party. Cathy holding the first fish she ever caught - well, okay, her daddy brought it in but she got to hold the reel - and beaming.

“She’s going to look just like you.”

“She’s got her mother’s hair.” Dark brown, tightly curled, smelling like shea butter when Kaz puts her hair up into six little palm trees that sprout up all over her head.

“Just wait till she gets older. Japan hasn't lost yet.”

“Please. She's gonna be a hundred times prettier than her old man.” It’s funny, how in America they just write her off as one race, but Kaz sees traces of his mother in her. The shape of her skull, her nose, her cheekbones.

"Really. I find her old man pretty enough himself."

Kaz puts down the picture, swallowing. Leans in and kisses him. Like he could have ever avoided this, not when the man is on his couch in his home looking the way he does, the way he always did. He still smells the same, even. 

Venom holds his face. Pushes him back, gently.

“Kaz. If we do this...”

“Snake. Just let me.” It’s something he hasn’t called him in years. Something he outright refused to call him. He’s trembling, he’s a goddamn middle aged man and he’s reduced to trembling in this one’s arms. “I’ll be sure to kick you to the curb, after.”

Kaz mouths at his throat. Kisses him again. Grinds on his hips like a teenager, and Venom’s hands are moving, now. Untucking his ugly McDonnell’s Burger’s T-shirt to feel out his body, the new parts he’s fitted on. Makes interesting noises in his mouth, unties his ponytail and runs his flesh hand through the long hair Kaz's grown with a pleased sigh.

Even before, he always looked at Kaz like a solar eclipse he'd gladly burn his last eye out to witness. It used to horrify Kaz. Make him twitch his stump under the sheets, leave a shirt on. Now Kaz lets him undress him, basks in his attention, twists his hips and grinds against his thickening cock. Venom's tongue is heavy in his mouth, the taste making him woozy.

Kaz wants to put pins in his limbs and keep him right here forever. Doesn't know if he wants Venom inside or around him, doesn't need to decide when Venom takes them both in hand together. They don't last long like that.

Then they’re sticky and sweaty and mostly clothed on the sofa, and Kaz still doesn’t want to let go.

“You've got time,” he says, swallowing. “Let me - we’ll go open the safe at the restaurant. Get a new car and just drive.”

“Drive.”

“Anywhere. We wouldn’t make it across the southern border, so we’ll go north. I hear Montana is real empty, huh? We’ll slip past the Mounties. All the way past the Arctic circle, they won’t find us.”

“Hmm. Sounds cold.”

“Or, or, or. Trade the car for a boat. Hell, we can take Cathy, she's a strong kid. It'll be a camping trip, and - we'll just - ”

Spend their days in hiding waiting for the knife to fall. Unable to show their faces, the both of them too distinctive in their disabilities. Venom old and bored, Kaz frustrated and hurling his words. The same things he said before, when he’d first found out the truth and let Venom know exactly what a pathetic puppet he was.

Kaz swallows. He’d do it. He knows he’d do it, but when he’s wrapped up in the phantom’s arms he wants to believe.

 _"Anything more than one person believes is reality. Freedom isn't finding answers, but silencing questions. What you might call the truth, as something independent of the self, is_ _\- "_

_"Sure. And any fool can single-handedly infiltrate a fortress if they’ve been trained right. But true courage, to stand on your own two feet, can’t be given. Can't be hypnotized in."_

_"The self is nothing more than the actions he takes. Identity is a lie the mind tells itself to survive. This isn't philosophy, Kaz. It's survival."_

_"That's Commander Miller to you."_

“What about the burgers?"

"I don't give a shit about the burgers. Snake, you can't just -"

"Kaz,” Venom says, and holds his face again. It’s an echo of what he did before, and Kaz wonders, nauseous, if this was something they specifically programmed in. Ocelot speaking in his voice. "Don't say it."

There it is. The rage that sustains him. That's kept him going all this time, no matter what the goddamn puppet thinks. He tugs his shirt back over the mess on his belly. Zips up his pants without bothering to clean up and takes a sip of cold tea. 

"You know, I've never forgiven myself for falling for you." His laugh is nasty, but it feels fantastic. "Does he fuck you, too? Such a good bitch for him, he wouldn't let that go to waste." Yeah, that's a good one. John's enough of a narcissist. "But that's exactly what he's doing. Throwing you away. And you're just gonna roll over and let him." 

The phantom stares at him, waiting for the other shoe to drop. 

"Get the fuck out of my house." 

 

**Author's Note:**

> the antithesis to this is, obviously, [the one where miller's maxi buns appears on diners, drive-ins, and dives](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12762735)
> 
> [the Maria Takeuchi song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bNITQR4Uso)


End file.
